Saturday, November 05, 2011

Lil Billy Keane makes good

I had no idea that Bil Keane's son, Glen, who inspired Billy in the strip, went on to become a famed animator, and until health issues intervened, was the director of "Tangled," one of Kelly's favorite movies. He also designed and animated Ariel in "The Little Mermaid," another of her favorites.

Sadly, Keane's mom, Thelma, who inspired the mom in the strip, died of Alzheimer's in 2008. She was an Australian who met her husband when they did war work there during WW II, and was so recognizable as Thel that people would stop her in the supermarket and ask her if she was the mom in the strip.

2 comments:

I guess I was weird, for "Mommy" in Family Circus was one of my first crushes (I was 5). I also recall the Dysfunctional Family Circus from the mid-90s, one of the first websites I ever looked at. You could re-caption Family Circus cartoons, and some of them were utterly hilarious (and nasty too). Some of these are available online still if you search hard enough.

Quick Linker

About Me

I'm an entertainment editor at MSNBC.com, and have maintained Pop Culture Junk Mail since August, 1999. The New York Times called the site "one of the best places to explore pop culture online," and Entertainment Weekly included it on their Top 100 Web Sites list. If you like weird food, strange products, and 1970s and 1980s nostalgia, PCJM is your home away from home.